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jjagot

Member

Registered: 2011-09-04

Posts: 7

cpupower issues

Hi,

Just doing an installation on my laptop after a few months away from Arch.

I cpufrequtils and configured as I always did as per the wiki, and that didn't work.  Saw that it is advised to use cpupower now instead and have tried to set it up, but both cores of my processor are constantly running at maximum:

[jagot@arch-samsung ~]$ grep MHz /proc/cpuinfo
cpu MHz		: 2401.000
cpu MHz		: 2401.000

MODULES=(acpi-cpufreq cpufreq_ondemand cpufreq_powersave)

DAEMONS=(syslog-ng dbus @cpupower @network crond @alsa acpid wicd slim)

/etc/conf.d/cpupower:

# Define CPUs governor
# valid governors: ondemand, performance, powersave, conservative, userspace.
governor='ondemand'

# Limit frequency range
# Valid suffixes: Hz, kHz (default), MHz, GHz, THz
min_freq="800000KHz"
max_freq="2401000KHz"

# Specific frequency to be set.
# Requires userspace governor to be available and loaded.
#freq=

# Utilizes cores in one processor package/socket first before processes are
# scheduled to other processor packages/sockets.
# See man (1) CPUPOWER-SET for additional details.
#mc_scheduler=

# Utilizes thread siblings of one processor core first before processes are
# scheduled to other cores. See man (1) CPUPOWER-SET for additional details.
#smp_scheduler=

#  Sets a register on supported Intel processore which allows software to convey
# its policy for the relative importance of performance versus energy savings to
# the  processor. See man (1) CPUPOWER-SET for additional details.
#perf_bias=

# vim:set ts=2 sw=2 ft=sh et:

I've tried researching this to no avail, so I would be grateful if anyone had some kind of clue.

Cheers.

Last edited by jjagot (2012-04-07 22:59:55)

.:B:.

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2006-11-26

Posts: 5,819

Website

Re: cpupower issues

I am very curious as to which CPU you have. Cpupower works fine as a cpufreq replacement on my Celeron G530 and i3 380-M, but it did not handle my Phenom II X4 980. Just like your CPU, despite defining the ondemand governor, CPU speeds were maxed out. Only rolling back to cpufreq 'fixed' that. Haven't tried replacing it recently.

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jjagot

Member

Registered: 2011-09-04

Posts: 7

Re: cpupower issues

[loki@arch-samsung ~]$ uname -a
Linux arch-samsung 3.3.1-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue Apr 3 06:46:17 UTC 2012 x86_64 Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

Yes, it's very weird.  I tried installing cpufreq as I always have done with no issues first and that did not work at all, and hence I tried cpupower with no luck.

Having said that, I have just realised that this maxed out cores issue seems to only be when it's plugged in.  When I unplug the laptop it seems to scale properly to powersaving mode:

[loki@arch-samsung ~]$ grep MHz /proc/cpuinfo
cpu MHz		: 800.000
cpu MHz		: 800.000